I feel your knife as it goes right in
by ibuzoo
Summary: The first man Hermione killed, had been a stupid rugby player that followed her home one day in college and thought he could have his way with her in some shabby back alley behind some old pizzeria. She smashed his head with an iron bar - out of necessity of course. Tom is probably the only other person in the world who understands how boring necessity becomes after a while.


**I feel your knife as it goes right in (cut to my core but I'm not bleeding)**

**Prompt: **Enemies

**Rating: **M

**Warnings: **Modern AU, reversed roles, Tom is an Inspector, Hermione is the criminal mastermind

**Word count: **1410

**Summary:**

The first man Hermione killed, as she tells him that night stretched out across Tom's bed with her head on his stomach and fingernails that scratch marks on his abdomen, had been a stupid rugby player that followed her home one day in college and thought he could have his way with her in some shabby back alley behind some old pizzeria.

She smashed his head with an iron bar - out of necessity of course.

Tom is probably the only other person in the world who understands how boring necessity becomes after a while.

**A/N: **This was actually a full planned and developed story with 14 chapters and 2 extra side stories but I decided I don't have the time to write it down completely so I skimmed and shortened it to bring the necessary facts into a prompt. Perhaps I'll write it some time in the future (eventually).

**Disclaimer: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

* * *

**o.**

214 arrests in the last two years and people call him the new Sherlock and he loves it, the sudden spotlight on his person, the baths in the masses, dinners with Charles and Camilla, the power he wields over London.

Inspector Tom Marvolo Riddle is twenty-seven, brilliant to the point of half-suicidal, devilish handsome with sharp facial features and dark hair that lies in a perfect haircut on his head, high cheekbones that are as keen as butcher knives and his sense of justice is far from the usual law that the police department of London preaches.

Perhaps that's the error in his estimation.

**i.**

A week later an assassin kills five highly esteemed members of the House of Lords, clean shot right trough the brain and Tom's sure they're overlooking something, examines all of the evidences himself once more, rolled up sleeves and tie already dropped on some pile of records, hair a mess and he snarls at his mirrored self in the glass cabinet of Rabastan's laboratory, grips his teeth until he feels the pain flashing trough his jawbone.

He falls asleep on top of some researches about the impact of acetone bullets on human skin and when he wakes there's a neon yellow post it neatly glued to his microscope, reading_ 'Every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned villain.'_

He rips it off and starts to smirk.

**ii.**

It doesn't take him long to find her - or did she planned this all along? Tom isn't sure anymore, can't take measure of her at all because this is not his territory, not his field and she's fighting with tricks and features that Tom never heard of before. She's dangerous and always ten steps ahead of him and that's absolutely not what he's used to because he's always the one in charge, the one in control but this is different, she's leading, he's following and that's really not what this should be at all.

He catches her once, but both of them know it was only because she wanted to be caught.

_(there's a strange and twisted ego in that, a familiar thirst that tells him they're one and the same)_

**iii.**

He feels the thrill to see her again but the guards tell him that she already fled the prison, the night right after the arrest.

_(he can't help but feel relieved that no bars can keep her prisoner)_

**iv.**

Hermione Jean Granger is twenty-five, a bit of a black widow, and twice as cold-blooded as she appears to be. She files her nails with the precision of an assassin, takes two sugars and milk in her coffee and can put a gun together blindfolded in less than a minute. Tom has seen those fingers moving with the delicacy of a pianist that look as gentle around the trigger of a gun as they look tender while they curl around his own throat - an exception, as she likes to put it, an aberration because she, like Tom himself, prefers to keep her hands clean of that sort of thing if she can help it. But Tom seems to be the exception that proves the rule because her hands always find the way to trail patterns on his skin.

He can't let her go.

**v.**

They kiss the third time he catches her and it feels like chewing on bullets.

_(there's gunpowder in his mouth, blood in the back of his throat and he coughs cordite, swallows iron)_

Her hands yank at his hair and he lifts her up, presses her against the dirty wall of the warehouse.

**vi.**

He lets her get away.

**vii.**

She shows up at his flat two weeks later, Starbucks coffee in hand and little white snowflakes were still glistening in the fiery mane on her head, the wild brown locks that gave her such an innocent look and Tom asked himself not for the first time how such a lamb could hide so much cruelty behind wide blown fawn-eyes.

"You're awfully sure of yourself", his voice is steady and firm and his eyes follow every movement of her swaying hips, her seductive thighs that show a bit too much skin under the short skirt as soon as she slips out of the heavy winter coat.

She's approaching the bedroom door, throws a glance over her shoulder and the smirk is far too dark, far too dangerous when she laughs, "Tell me you don't like it, I promise I'll stop." She opens the door and her blouse slides down her shoulders, her arms until it rests on the old wooden floor.

He keeps silent and follows.

**viii.**

In the morning, she's gone.

_(Abraxas calls it control - but what does Abraxas know anyway?)_

**ix.**

A week later she murders ten people in different compartments of the MI6 - all at the same time, right on the last day of the year when all were rushing home to celebrate the new year with their families and friends and it makes this scenery even more cruel, like something out of an awful horror story, and Tom starts to grin, maniac, adrenaline rushing trough his veins.

_'__Do you like my present?'_, says a text on his i-Phone when he turns around to grab his coat, fingers steady when the next one arrives, reads, '_I made it especially for you.'_

He can't stop the smirk on his lips and there's a dark shudder on his spine, something that makes him want to go and see the bodies, look at their disfigured faces, at the blood that spilled out of them and worship it, soak it all up because she made it for him, him alone.

_'__How sentimental of you.'_

There's a pause and he almost thinks that this was not the answer she was expecting and he hesitates, asks himself what he's doing, how his principles went overboard a long time ago and where he lost them at all - but then his phone vibrates and he laughs, all doubts removed.

_'__Hurry home once you're done - after all you don't want me to start without you, not on your birthday, do you?'_

**x.**

The first man Hermione killed, as she tells him that night stretched out across Tom's bed with her head on his stomach and fingernails that scratch marks on his abdomen, had been a stupid rugby player that followed her home one day in college and thought he could have his way with her in some shabby back alley behind some old pizzeria.

She smashed his head with an iron bar - out of necessity of course.

Tom is probably the only other person in the world who understands how boring necessity becomes after a while.

**xi.**

She needs to go and he does nothing to stop her.

_(Bellatrix calls it loneliness - but what does Bella know anyway?)_

**xii.**

Abraxas comes over on a Thursday, sits down on his couch and they're watching some polo game, drink cold lemon ice tea that's far too sweet for his liking but he swallows it nevertheless and wonders for a black, delusional fragment of a second whether or not to tell the truth.

He doesn't in the end, but turns his head and faces the television again.

_(Hermione is a secret he can't share)_

**xiii.**

"I'm not going to work with you", Tom presses, urges and it's true because he's not a person that shares his success and he'd never feel as an equal, not besides her, fiery, obnoxious and wild how she is.

„I didn't asked you to work with me", she whispers, almost giggles and there's something predatory behind those dark brown orbs, something hazardous and perilous like a forest fire or some volcanic eruption. She presses her fingertips right in the crook of his neck, at the edge of his pulse, pushes her thumb under his chin, straddles his lap and runs her other hand trough his dark locks, yanks at them until their eyes are locked once more.

„Then what are you asking?", he whispers, almost breathes while his eyes are blown wide, tongue wets his lips and it's utter perfection when she leans down, ghosts over him and answers almost aphonic, „Don't ask questions you won't like the answer to."

She kisses him and he stays silent once more.

**xiv.**

She stays after that and he doesn't mind, keeps her close.

_(Hermione calls it love - but what does she know anyway?)_


End file.
